Tag Archives: Characters

We love builds with character! Creating characters from LEGO elements, whether traditional System bricks or using elements from Bionicle and Constraction themes, is an amazing way to showcase your building skills. Brining out emotion and personality in bricks is an art!

Booze and LEGO don’t usually mix this well

In these dark times, I find a lot of comfort in watching silly YouTube videos. In heavy rotation for me (builder Chris Doyle) is The TRY Channel. There, a bunch of Irish comedians react to odd foods and activities. It’s really funny. Sometimes the challenges involve a lot of alcohol, and thus feature drunk Irish comedians. This, to me, is even funnier. Imagine my delight then, when TRY released Drunk Irish People Try Building LEGO Sets. I’ll give you a quick recap of the episode: It doesn’t go particularly well for most of them.
Two of the TRYers, though, Dermot Ward and Bláithín de Burca, manage to get through more than two-thirds of the build of the 76119 Batmobile set. I felt really bad for them when time ran out and they had to stop. So, being the sort of person who builds with LEGO myself, I thought I’d make a little alternate-reality ending for the video where they did finish.

This was one of my first times building characters in the likeness of “real people”, as opposed to robots or super-heroes. I think they turned out pretty recognizable. Dermot likes to joke that he has an oversized head, so there are a few extra bricks in his forehead. His mostly-unbuttoned plaid shirt, though, was a real pain at this scale. I used a combination of headlight bricks and 1×1 tiles to get a suggestion of the pattern. Creating a version of Bla had some challenges as well. I used rubber bands for the straps on her top, and digging into my sticker stash to find something to use for the decoration. A pair of chrome grill tiles and some Brickheadz glasses complete her look. I also built a tiny Batmobile, Batman, and Joker. Because context matters.

The best part of this build for me was when the TRYers reacted to it. It’s super gratifying when a bit of fan art gets a big thumbs up from the people depicted in it. And Mary-Claire wants me to work up versions of her and Lolsy next. That sounds like something I’m going to have to…Try. (Sorry. I couldn’t resist.)

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Blast to the past with Generation 1 Transformers

Builder Alex Jones (Orion Pax) has a laser-focused talent to bring our favorite Transformers to life. They not only look great and recognizable in their humanoid form, but it takes skill to also make the same builds look fabulous in their alternate vehicle modes using LEGO bricks. This is not an easy task indeed and would likely take tons of hours of experimentation. These sets of builds feature; Autobots Ironhide, Cosmos, Mirage, and Powerglide each decorated with the unmistakable patterns and prints from the original box designs from the 80s. They certainly don’t make morning cartoons like they used to!

Click to see more Autobots in action

Laughing all the way to the bank

There’s no stopping the insanity of the Joker at the box office, with it now surpassing the Deadpool movies to be the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time. Though more fan builds will inevitably come, for now this build by Vincent’s LEGO Creation is likely as close as we’re going to get to a minifigure representation of the groundbreaking performance by Joaquin Phoenix, since we all know how LEGO feels about representing movies with that level of violence. However, you never can tell as we’ve seen how LEGO tackles more unconventional topics with convention releases.

Captain Nemo reporting for duty.

Majestic and mysterious. Those are just a few choice words to describe this LEGO model of Jules Verne’s enigmatic submarine captain by Eero Okkonen. Nemo, or Prince Dakkar, pilot of the equally mysterious Nautilus submarine, is adorned with gold trim, and that olive green turban even has a nautilus tile in front. By far though, the star of this build is his richly textured mustache and beard, made from such choice parts as Star Wars pistols, minifigure hands, and “raven” wings. He would make a fearsome foe indeed.

A LEGO builder builds a LEGO builder building LEGO

It was a pleasure to meet Jason Allemann a few weeks back at BrickCon. He was our very funny keynote speaker and if you don’t know him by name, you may certainly know him as the builder who specializes in feats of engineering such as his now famous Sysiphus model and the two times his LEGO Ideas submissions became actual sets; once with the 21305 Ball Maze and the 21315 Pop-Up Book. If you were lucky enough to attend BrickCon this year, you may have had a chance to get your grubby little mitts on the exclusive convention model, which is of this LEGO builder building LEGO, built by Jason, also a LEGO builder. See, it’s totally meta! Like all of Jason’s models, movement is a key feature with this one. You turn a crank and this little fellow toils busily on his LEGO model of the BrickCon logo.

Also, if you happen to have a Power Functions motor you can hook that bad boy to it and this little guy will really cook! But don’t just take my word for it, watch this build video of the designer building the model, then later hooking up a motor to it. Brothers Brick’s own Chris Malloy did the graphic design for the packaging. Neat!

Chibi Sisyphus can never get ahead of his head

In order to fully appreciate this next creation, we’re going to have to define a couple of terms. The first is chibi. That’s a Japanese slang term that describes an art style where characters are drawn as small, chubby figures with exaggerated features. The second is Sisyphus. In Greek mythology, he was a king who was punished by the gods for his wicked ways. He is forced to push a giant boulder up an even bigger hill, only to have it roll back down every time it nears the top. At first glance, these two terms don’t seem to have a lot do to with each other. Leave it to Sheo to unify them into a really cute image of eternal torture. In this version, Sisyphus doesn’t have a boulder to push; instead, his over-sized chibi head is the enormous weight that has to be moved upwards.

Creative use of various arches and curved slopes creates an anguished, yet adorable, visage. The use of a curved brick for the leg gives a great sense of that upward pushing. I also like the detail of the 2×2 round tile for his belly, and let’s not ignore the build of the mountain either. The rocks are built out in all directions, with a combination of slopes, plates, and tiles giving some lively texture to the backdrop.

Smile through your fear and sorrow...

The new Joker movie by Todd Philipps in my view tells one of the best origin stories for the Clown Prince of Crime. Being a fan of the Dark Knight and the various original treatments of his arch-enemy over the past decades, no comic panel could have told the tale that was told with the amazing embodiment of Joaquin Phoenix on the big screen. While this LEGO bust of the Joker by George Panteleon isn’t from the movie, it bears a striking resemblance to the Joker from Batman: The Animated Series, especially that nose and that wide grin. The amazing brick layering techniques in which every single piece seems to fit perfectly and brings this character to life gives me the chills.

Click to see more angles of this superb build

Jason, watch out! Here come the skeletons!

One of the most memorable movies of my childhood was the 1963 stop-motion feature Jason and the Argonauts which features the work of animation master Ray Harryhausen. This pair of skeletons by Moko look like they jumped right out the movie, passing through a Terminator filter on the way out. The skulls, made from this Bionicle skull part, are a perfect choice, and those ribs made from a creature claw are great too.

Ape, bear, whatever... it’s an epic figure

It’s not often we see a Sigourney Weaver inspired LEGO creation which isn’t something to do with the Alien movie franchise. Well here’s a cracking build from Ian Hoy inspired by the 1988 Dian Fossey biopic Gorillas in the Mist. Oh, hang on…My mistake. Seems this is actually inspired by PANDAS in the mist, more specifically Chen Stormstout — brewer, monk, and warrior — a character in the 2012 Mists Of Pandaria expansion to World Of Warcraft.

Regardless of its inspiration, this is excellent LEGO character modelling. The clothing is great — particularly the toggle fastenings, the white strip edging, and the way the pyjama-top hangs beneath the belt. The face has the brilliant combination of cute-yet-scary which the Panda warriors carried in the game, and all the details are present and correct, including the ponytail and the sandals on those clawed feet. Nice bearclaw emblems on the knees too.

We all float down here, Georgie!

Our more sensitive readers who suffer from Coulrophobia may want to look away from bbchai‘s latest killer clown creation. Pennywise is here to lure you down to the sewers where you will get cotton candy, and rides, and all sorts of surprises! And balloons too… all colors. I suggest picking the red one.

While my black heart will always belong to Tim Curry as Pennywise, there is no doubt that the current incarnation is terrifying in ITs own way. This LEGO version is just as frightening and implements some wonderful parts use to create the famous clown’s costume and face. I really like the teeth used to make the frilly collar and the use of the actual minifigure frilly collar as cuffs is smart and clever. I’m also quite fond of the white lipstick pieces as fingers and the interpretation of his oversized forehead utilizing the curved wedge piece. Not to mention those eyes! Jeepers creepers, what scary peepers!

Of course, no IT collection is complete without Georgie. The hapless victim is wonderfully rendered here in his iconic yellow rain slicker. The builder has even included the toy that started the whole mess, the humble paper boat. But does it float? Oh, yes, gentle reader, it floats. And when you’re down there with Pennywise… YOU’LL FLOAT TOO!

Time-travelling assassins are busting out all over

Messing with the timeline? You’d better watch out — the Commission are bound to send their best agents after you. Jonas Kramm takes inspiration from Netflix’s dramatisation of Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá’s Umbrella Academy, putting together this cool pair of busts depicting Cha-Cha and Hazel, a pair of professional time-travelling assassins. For those who haven’t seen the show, the pair of killers arrive in our time wearing huge carnival costume heads. Jonas has perfectly captured their sinister yet cartoon-like appearance, and the use of umbrellas as neckties works well for the suits but also acts as a nice little nod to the show’s title. If only we could use Cha-Cha and Hazel’s time-travelling abilities to make season 2 arrive a little sooner.

A Toa rises again, only to crush you beneath her heavy boots

I’m afraid I missed out on Bionicle almost entirely, as it started getting big right as I faded into my dark ages, and was mostly gone when I came back out of them. It’s a shame, really, since they had some incredible parts and a wide range of colors for those parts. That being said, I have always been a classic LEGO System guy, largely eschewing Technic and the ball-joint-based Constraction style for the old-fashioned stud connections. I usually scroll through photos of LEGO creations and skip past anything Bionicle-related, in fact. But sometimes a creation of that sort is so good, so perfectly balanced and detailed, that I cannot help but admire it. Such is this Toa by Anthony Wilson. The colors pop with the trans-pink in both the crystalline base and the accents of the figure, and the pose as she strides across the base exudes confidence and swagger.

Sweet Mayhem’s starship’s windscreen makes for an excellent shield, ready to deflect any attacks from an enemy. The glinting pink eyes shine out from behind the Matatu mask in a menacing manner that befits her name, Tuyet the Tyrant. The textures of the base, with the spaced-out 2×2 tiles and the greebles beneath, complements the presentation perfectly, but the highlight of the whole build for me is the midriff, so sleekly captured with the shoulder armor piece. It evokes the exposed stomach of so many heroines of nerdy fantasy games and comic books, yet in a way that still says that she’d kill you without a second thought, and easily, too.